Lotus
The very vermin, the alleycats and other denizens of Paradigm City that humans often forget, are far from immune to the glut of super powers that have arisen within its boarders. Many of the super-powered creatures fail to learn to utilize their powers, but in rare circumstances, one arises to lay claim to their heroic birthright. One such tale can be woven from the fate of a simple raccoon, a scavenger of garbage cans and seeker of simple, shiny items. In the case of Lotus, she evolved rapidly into a humanoid form, growing far more intelligent and able to think for herself. Without much purpose in life, she mostly just took to survival at first, retaining her original ways, such as scavenging meals and such and living as a street urchin. Over time, however, she discovered she had a rather innate fondness of shiny objects, and began collecting such along with her basics of survival. Soon, she had amassed a large treasure hoard of trinkets, foil, wrapping paper and so on. Within a few short years, she found herself as a remarkably skilled thief. One fateful night, however, she robbed a rather wealthy looking penthouse of a well off hotel. The heist would have been perfect and netted her a remarkably ample sized ruby for her troubles. Instead, she found herself tied to a chair. As her captor explained all too well that she didn't have any right to rob anything of value within the area, no matter what kind of freak of nature she was, as she clearly wasn't a member of the thieves' guild, she instead considered her ways of escape. By the time her captor was about to lean in to gloat, instead he found his own dagger against his throat. With remarkable speed and skill, he was able to pry the weapon away from Lotus with ease, but rather than chastise her further, he saw potential, not just a would be usurper. As such, she was taken back with him to learn more of the ways of the human world, as well as to learn to become one of the Nightshades; a "gentlemen thieves guild", of sorts, of which most were more than well enough off already, and simply stole for the thrill of evading the most intricate defenses. She studied under them for years, growing from a pre-teen girl, and blossoming into a young woman, sights and skills set upon amassing the greatest hoard of jewelry the city had ever seen. During her training, it became apparent that her keen intellect was not the only power she had gained; her delicate touch and keen hearing were well beyond that even of her heritage, and she proved herself naturally adept at traversing the shadows with an uncanny method of being right where she needed to be, and knowing exactly when not to be around for each and every attempt to capture her. Time and again she surpassed expectations, eventually achieving the rank of "Mistress" in the youngest age the order had known. Though not on the top of the food chain, she certainly was in the upper echelons of the pecking order, and had done quite well for herself, becoming the perfect infiltrator, able to slip past almost any defense, mechanical, computerized, or otherwise, and escape undetected, as if she had never been, the only evidence of her passing simply being the remarkable lack of jewelry left in her wake. After having amassed a relatively respectable fortune for herself, Lotus began to grow weary of such, finding little to no challenge left in the chase. When someone actually attempted to steal from her in return, however, it dawned on her that there must be others out there with skills and powers similar to, or potentially even greater than her own. As such, it would be the greatest challenge to stalk the stalkers and hunt the shadows for others of her own kind. After all, not only would it cement her position as the mistress of the night, it would bring her the greatest challenges she yet would know, and bring forth the greatest of treasures. She turned upon her order and began to hunt them instead, their personal riches were the most closely guarded, with defenses built by thieves who knew how to break each and every one, making for a vastly more complex network of tricks to keep their treasures safe. One by one, however, their treasures went missing, mysteriously gone without a trace and even the traps left untripped, their cages in pristine order with nothing to guard. Even as the predators became the prey one after another, no evidence as to the culprit could be found. Each vault boasted a new obstacle course to overcome, a new set of challenges to defeat. She put her keen intellect to use, developing a wide variety of tools to defeat the locks and traps, then adapting them for ranged use. Her uncanny ability to slip through the shadows grew stronger, and with personal training she found she could do so very much more within the darkness, having true super powers of her own which were only now beginning to show themselves. She likely would have continued on, honing her skills further, except for a fateful night when her fence and best friend--an anthropomorphic field mouse named Lazarus-- turned up dead, murdered. She'd never seen death before, not firsthand, not like that. The Nightshades' strict rule of no permanent bodily harm had kept her safe until that moment from facing death headon. They were thieves, not murderers, not simple brigands. To see her friend no longer alive stirred something within her - she would return the favour at some point. Her bright and cheerful demeanor remained, but lurking beneath now lay a burning need for vengeance. That the city would garner her skills and powers in it's benefit and defense, would be more of a coincidence, than an intentional choice. That she would be led straight into working alongside Heroes Unlimited would be an even greater turn of events. All of her contacts within the underworld, her considerable skills of subterfuge and espionage, everything she had would be at their disposal so long as she could aid them in their manhunt for her friend's killer - and as the pages turn, it would appear that the death of her friend was only the first step in a much longer path. Whether the path will end in redemption or corruption remains to be seen. For now, however, another hero has been born, in the most unlikely of allies to justice. Personality/Motivation Lotus has a severe aversion to death, and will go considerably out of her way to avoid killing anyone. If she absolutely has to harm someone, she'll attempt to do so indirectly, or at least in a manner so that she doesn't have to be present to know it occurred, and even so, preferably providing an escape for the target if they're smart, so that she can tell herself that she never truly killed anyone. She grows nauseous immediately at the sight of blood, and if she were to see someone die directly before her, she'd likely go into shock almost immediately, with difficulties at processing the concept fully. She had enough issues coping with the concept that her friend was actually not alive anymore, and that was only after seeing him after the fact. Overall Lotus maintains a cheerful, bubbly personality. She's friendly and sees no real reason to be angry at most things, viewing the vast majority of problems just as one more challenge to succeed against. In terms of theft, anything that isn't bolted down isn't worth stealing. The more tightly locked away something is, the greater the puzzle to solve and the more fun it is to successfully claim it as her own. Shiny, pleasing to the eye objects are also of great value to her, with gemstones in particular holding a special fondness to her sense of aesthetics. She'll virtually always be wearing some sort of jewelry around to show off her latest haul. In fact, Lotus really only has three things she lives for: shiny objects, the thrill of defeating challenges that shouldn't be possible to be surpassed, and candy. She has an enormous sweet tooth - 40 of them to be exact, and she's practically always munching on a sweet flavoured treat of some sort, be it during briefings, during a mission, in the middle of combat, or working with sensitive materials. While she doesn't like to kill at all, nor harm people, it's more related to her order's views that a real thief should never need to harm anyone and to do so is a mark of failure upon the thief's part, rather than of personal interest in the well-being of others. She isn't even really personally aware of her fear of actual death or bloodshed as it's never really come up in her life. Quote "Have you ever actually tried stealing candy from a baby? Yeah, the most advanced diamond vaults in existence pale in comparison. Not that I'd know anything about that or anything..." Powers/Tactics Lotus has the ability to manipulate, alter and pass through shadows on a whim, along with several other specific effects she can muster as needed. * Can make shadows darker, hiding things easier in them. (Up to pure pitch black) * Can step through any shadows, and carry other people/items through with her. All shadows are connected, though she's limited to passing through those in line of sight. * Can specifically poke the barrel of her gun through one shadow and out another for near-melee shots. * Can look through any shadow and see out another as though it were a window, also limited to shadows within line of sight. * Can envelop someone standing in a shadow in absolute, total darkness, a prison where they can't see or move, they're locked in total darkness until someone shines a light on the shadow, dispelling it. The target must already be in a shadow for this to work. The tactics Lotus employs normally entail staying as far away from combat as possible, preferably never getting caught and needing to fight in the first place. If she's cornered and must fight, however, Lotus will tend to slip through the shadows to a high vantage point for better surveillance and rely on her sniper rifle's wide array of custom munitions. The types of ammo which Lotus has either captured or developed herself, are primarily intended for subterfuge purposes rather than direct combat, though many can be used in combat against even supers with significant effect if the need calls for such. The full list of her known ammo types she's used in the past before include the following: * Thermite rounds (for breaking into safes; burns at 4,000+ C, easily able to melt steel) * Earthshaker round (claws latch onto a target and then motors shake the large caliber round in a cascading resonance frequency which causes about a 5.5 earthquake in a small area; not super damaging but will break windows and crack foundations near the center point. Ideal for tripping all tremor sensors in an entire city block, negating their usefulness. If attached to an individual directly, will ragdoll them about, making it near impossible for even supers to stay on their feet, but probably won't cause much actual injury due to how it operates.) * Snare net (infrared sensors detect a target and release a net before contact; large bolo-like weights wrap around the target then motors tighten the steel mesh to restrict movement further so that even extra-strong targets are unable to build any momentum to break free. If the mesh starts breaking, the motors electrify the net to attempt to stun the target.) * Bunker buster (Adapted from a military shotgun round, this heavy round splits into four submunitions just before it strikes a target. These drill into even hardened concrete, steel or wood, then shaped charges detonate, blowing open a hole through walls, doors, or pretty much anything else.) * Armour piercing diamond tipped drill (claws latch onto a target, then a small drill burrows through the surface; uses synthetic diamonds which are even harder than normal diamonds and surprisingly cheaper to produce - will drill through practically anything short of magically enchanted barriers.) * Expanding caltrops (saturates an area with many submunitions that unfold into caltrops, blanketing the area with them) * Liquid Nitrogen burst (the shell's casing breaks away mid-flight to reveal a small capsule which breaks on impact, then covers with liquid nitrogen and freezes to almost absolute zero.) * Tranquilizer rounds (two-stage injection can pierce even armour plating to deliver payload. The tranquilizer itself takes a few moments to take effect; it'll make a target groggy and paralyze vocal chords almost instantly, but total blood saturation takes longer to render the target unconscious.) * Taser (breaks casing before hitting target, hits two spots, runs a steady direct voltage current to incapacitate. Since the current forces the target's own muscles to contract, the stronger the opponent is, the more effective the paralysis is as well. Enemies without muscles are immune, such as undead, and those who have low muscle mass or large amounts of insulation such as being very fat will have minimal effect against them.) * Pepper spray (military versions are about 5 million scovilles while this cloud of almost pure crystal capsaicin weighs in at 16 million. Chokes enemies submission and the density of the crystal cloud makes it ideal for diffusing laser tripwires) * Subsonic Pulse (disrupts most audio sensors and is highly unpleasant to anything with hearing in about a 15 foot radius, causing effects similar to an overwhelming migraine for about 30 seconds. Will bring most humanoids to their knees in a small area) * Skunk rounds (stolen Israeli shipment; this bio-engineered weapon leaves a horrid stench that prevents most people from doing much else other than puking, and paints the target a bright yellow. Will not wash out no matter how much you try. Lasts 3 days for both scent and colouration, can only be removed by a very specific, chemically coded soap which normally only police have access to. Lotus has the recipe for the soap, as a just in case.) * Electromagnetic Pulse (fries all non-hardened electronics in a small area. Circuits burn out and will need to be replaced. Hardened electronics and those in faraday cages are immune.) * Zip-Line (shot attaches to a firm surface, other end can be hooked on behind her and then tightens when a button is pressed on the side. She has a hook that attaches to her harness and can slide down easily.) * Sensor shot (drops a tremor & infrared sensor nearby; alarm is sent to her ear comm if tripped) Skills Lotus possess a great many skills related to subterfuge, infiltration, forgery, acrobatics and safecracking. She's a master locksmith, and a capable engineer - having researched and developed most of her personal ammunition types she uses, and many of her additional tools she keeps handy upon her person. Her capacity for hacking is largely unheard of since she's grown quite adept at simply not being caught. Slipping into mainframes to grab secure documents for blackmail, experimental blueprints to build herself, or just knowledge in general has become almost a chore to her given how easy it is for most systems. She occasionally breaks into ultra-violet level security systems just for a change of pace and to see what the newest and most interesting defenses available are. If there's one skill Lotus doesn't possess, however, it's social skills. She has a bad habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, completely lacking in empathy due to the human mindset being entirely alien to her, and as such, she makes for a very lousy con artist. Appearance Lotus appears as an anthropomorphic raccoon with an eight foot long, overly bushy tail which stands in stark contrast to her own modest 5'4 frame. Her proportions make her appear as though she's much taller than she actually is, however, and many are surprised when they stand next to her only to realize her apparent 6+ foot size is only an optical illusion generated by her very long legs and arms, and relatively quite small torso and head in comparison. Her fur is a bright, almost electric neon blue contrasted with black stripes - this is not her natural colouration, she just happens to be completely colourblind and someone recently told her that most humans find blue to be a pleasant colour so she dyed her fur and it hasn't come out yet. Honestly, it mostly just looks really weird. (An early attempt at dying her fur, before she tried blue, can be seen to the right) Her clothing primarily consists of a non-descript black jumpsuit and body harness, along with a great many pouches attached all over, with her giant sniper rifle slung over her back and shoulder. Rogues Gallery Lotus has few enemies that she knows of. Some of the more remarkable villians she has crossed swords with include: 'Packrat '-- An Olympic Industries 'collector', Packrat seems intent on capturing Lotus almost to the exclusion of everything else. A master acrobat and hand-to-hand combatant, Packrat matches Lotus for skill in both these arenas. Lotus has not yet been able to determine why Packrat is after her with such single-minded intensity. 'Wolvesbane '-- Wolvesbane is the Praetorian version of Lotus. As the two share a very common, nay; almost identical background Wolvesbane has convinced herself that only Lotus could have killed 'Sebastian', whom is Wolvesbane's version of Lotus' Lazarus. As such Wolvesbane has promised to add Lotus to the list of extinct species. Lotus has made plenty of enemies, including most of her own order of the Nightshade, but she's successfully managed to evade having her identity ever known due to her overwhelming capacity to cover her tracks, both literally and figuratively. If anyone ever found out what she's been responsible for, she would have everyone from the top levels of government to her own thiefly order lining up to have a word with her, along with probably a brawl over who gets to torture her first. Almost every major individual and organization in the city who possesses riches or information owes the loss of at least one corrupted server or broken vault to her, even though they may not be aware of such. This also happens to include Heroes Unlimited, which may come back to haunt her in the near future.